


Edge of the sand wastes

by goldenlaurels



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Welcome to Night Vale Setting, Character Death, Inspired by Welcome to Night Vale, No Romance, One Shot, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16580978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenlaurels/pseuds/goldenlaurels
Summary: I am born and reborn upon this mortal plane and the screams of my children echo across the sand wastes





	Edge of the sand wastes

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if any of you guys are here from my other fics, I haven't been able to dedicate much time to writing. I'm currently between houses right now which totally sucks. Hopefully I'll find somewhere to stay and I'll be able to update my other fics.

I live on the edge of the sand wastes with my mother in a small cabin made of pine. We listen to the radio in silence, the doors are locked and the shutters closed, though I can hear the wind whistling outside. I hold a loaded gun in my lap, just in case. A helicopter flies overhead and I stare into the eyes of my mother who does not blink, and neither do I. She has a gun of her own and we listen to Cecil's voice over the radio but it is turned down low so we won't be found. I can see beyond the burnt black eyes of my mother and I can hear her speak to me although her mouth doesn't move. I see tomorrow, the rise of the sun over the sand wastes and the tears on my mother's cheeks.

Time passes around my mother and I like rocks in a stream. We are anchored to the universe as time and space moves around us. I can see static in the air where this reality blends with the next. An old woman who is not my mother stares at me from across the room. Her skin is thin and I can see the blood pumping through her veins. Her heartbeat is fast an erratic, but I can only see her fro the corner of my eye. She does not smile so I don't point my gun at her. She listens to the weather and I keep her in my peripheral vision until she glides through the wall to return to her grave in the wastes. She was young when she died, I still remember. I put a star on her shallow grave decades ago and she still hasn't forgiven me. 

Yet, I in this form am not decades old. I am as my mother is and we are infinitely growing and changing. Her being will be too old soon, and I will become her, she will become me. That is why I look into her eyes, I have watched my mother dying for weeks, though it could have been years. I have seen her life and the life of her mother, and her mother's mother, though their memories blur together into one unending lifetime. Soon I will be unable to distinguish myself from them but the knowledge passes through my fingertips and I can feel the static filling my head.

Once my mother is released I will know all that she knows through her own eye. There is a knock at the door and I blink breaking the connection. My mother slumps back into her chair, her breath shallow she stares into the corner where the old woman had been. I will bury them next to one another so that they may keep each other company in the afterlife, though I'm uncertain whether they will be able to forgive one another. I stand to open the door and my legs are weak and prickle as I step on the dusty pine floor. As I open the door light floods into our little cabin and I blink quickly adjusting to the sun. It is warm against my skin and I savor it for a moment before I look down to see a rose sitting on the porch. 

My breath catches in my throat and my mother coughs weakly when see sees the rose in my hand and places her gun on her lap with a bony shaking hand outstretched to me. Her skin is sallow and she reaches, and though I worry for her the static crackling at her fingertips tells me she is stronger than I give her credit for. I hand her the rose and watch her bring it to her nose so that she may smell it, I have less time than I imagined. I stoke the furnace with wood and watch as my mother grasps the rose so tightly that the thorns puncture her skin. She says nothing and neither do I. I sit across from mother and I can hear Cecil talking about the rose that was left on our doorstep and the strange nearly human looking young woman that picked it up. I hold my own gun tightly in my hands, and I rest my finger just over the trigger pointing it at the door. Then slowly my mother lays the rose on her gown which is now stained with blood and points her rifle at me. I take a steady breath and look into my mother's eyes once again

The static buzzes at the corners of my vision and my heart aches for my mother, but I continue on, for the pain is only temporary and soon we will feel nothing. I breathe in the air which has grown cold even with the dry desert heat just outside and the fire raging on. There is frost forming on the windows and my heart patters fast and I am fearful, not only for me, or my mother, but for everyone in this town, everyone on this planet, and everyone in this dimension. My stomachs tightens and I feel like I might puke but I refuse to blink.

I see my mother in her childhood, she is playing with a pair of dolls with burnt black eyes and singed hair. The paint on the walls is peeling and I can hear her own mother in another room humming a familiar tune. I listen for a moment before she is cut off by the wail of sirens and my heart flutters in tune with my mother's. She takes her dolls and runs down a dingy hallway and into a basement. She curls up under a table holding the dolls close and whispers a prayer that nobody listens to. I whisper the same prayer, one she taught me long ago but in that moment I can't distinguish my mother's voice from my own.

A bomb hits close to the house and I hear screaming and the crackling of flames. I cover my ears but it does not lessen the sound of misery which roams the streets. I try to tell myself that it's just a memory, that this never happened to me, but I can see the world through my mother's eyes now. And her fear feels like my own. Grandmother, my mother, an extension of me, locks the door and holds me close. Her burnt black eyes look into mine and she begins the ritual.

I see it start a hundred times and I feel myself fall deeper into those same burnt black eyes, my eyes. I feel pain but I'm not entirely sure it is connected to myself. The air is charged with the scent of death and smoke. But my previous incarnations look into one another's eyes. I can see the birth and death of stars, I see the sorrow of the world and I lift them onto my shoulders. I can still hear the screaming but under everything I can hear Cecil and it calms me. I watch an eternity flash in front of me, millions of memories passed down generation after generation. The screaming is only growing louder as I escape my memories. I can hear Cecil more clearly and I claw my way back . Everything is dark but I can see myself dying a million times over and over, the pain ripping at my skin.

Suddenly the darkness is gone and I'm staring at my previous vestige singed bones sitting across from me. Her gun still pointed at me and her blood sitting in a pool around her old rocking chair. I hear the screams of children in my ears but everything is buzzing, I can feel the very air part around me as I stand. I take the blood covered rose and place it in front of the fire, which has been reduced to embers. On the mantle I place a kiss on the foreheads of my dolls which sit perfectly still, their hair singed and their black eyes unblinking. I whisper a prayer but nobody listens. As I gather my previous vessels bones and put the rifle back into it's spot above the mantle I listen to the radio.

"I recommend that all citizens of Nightvale stay indoors until the ash settles, if you can hear the children screaming-." I leave the cabin shovel over my shoulder and the bones of my old vessel in a bag thrown over my other. I trudge into the sand wastes and once I reach the shallow grave of the woman whose grave I marked with a star I brush off bits of burning ash from my skin and begin digging.

I can hear the children screaming, possibly others as well and I dig until my vessel's hands ache. I quickly leave throwing the bones in the pit and covering them with sand. I say no prayer and I shed no tears as I walk back to my cabin. The children have stopped screaming and the ash have settled. Cecil is talking about my children but I turn off the radio.  
I approach the fire which has gone out, I suddenly feel the pull of the blood soaked rose in my gut. I lift it, gripping it tightly in my hand, almost tight enough to puncture my skin. I carry it, walking ever so slowly through Nightvale and I can feel the eyes of my daughters watching me. They do not scream, but instead they walk behind me with tentative steps. I can hear their tiny feet pattering like rain and I can imagine them, with their black burned eyes and their ghost-like skin. I wish to look at them, my new children, but I can't look back.

Not until I have collected a lifetime of sorrow to share with her, whichever of them survives. And we will walk until then, see the world and burn the wicked at a stake. We will bring justice, we will bring fire. But as the thought crosses my mind I know that there will never be justice, only fire, and fury, and me. And in time I will grow old, but just as injustice laughs in the face of the kindhearted, I laugh in the face of death.


End file.
